Entrepreneurial Education in Germany Jutta Günther, Ilka Ritter IWH ...

Infrastructure in support of Entrepreneurial Activities
Although entrepreneurial activities are not explicitly mentioned as a goal in the mission
statement of the university, in practice, the university has clearly engaged upon a policy of
encouraging students to become entrepreneurs. In more general terms, the Leuphana
University explicitly supports the commercialization of knowledge (technology transfer from
science to industry). There exists, for example, a technology transfer office and incubator
facilities, and naturally the entrepreneurial activities at the university benefit therefrom.
The Leuphana University offers not only entrepreneurial consulting but also incubators
(“Gründungslabor”) for former students and university employees. Moreover, an innovation
center enabling newly established firms to prosper is in place as well. It is important to note
that the “Gründungslabor” is a third party project. In fact, 45% of the funds come from the
European Social Fund and the remaining 55% of funds are contributed by the chairs’
sponsors. Two years after the establishment of the chair for entrepreneurship, this separate
institution for counseling potential entrepreneurs was developed. The directorate of the
“Gründungslabor” is formed by two persons: the university’s professor for entrepreneurship
as academic director plus a managing director. Consequently, the professor for
entrepreneurship sees his role as making students aware of the possibility to be self-employed
and eventually concrete ideas are realized with the assistance of the “Gründungslabor”.
Hence, the chair and the entrepreneurial consultancy work together such as a tandem. With
the establishing of the “Gründungslabor”, the university’s science-industry link was
promoted and the effectiveness of the entrepreneurship chair strengthened. Clearly, also the
fusion of the university with the university of applied sciences aides in this matter as a range
of technical studies are now offered at the Leuphana University Lüneburg.
Typically, students develop a business idea in one of the courses given by the chair for
entrepreneurship and are then directed to the “Gründungslabor”. Here, they have the
possibility to attend events informing about certain aspects of entrepreneurship in the form of
a workshop. Thereafter, there is the possibility for counseling meetings. Most of the time,
students are then invited once more for further and more detailed meetings in which the
business plan is being discussed. For special questions, students are then referred to
specialists on taxes, patent law or the legal organizational forms. For this matter, the
entrepreneurship center has a broad network for collaboration (e.g. experienced entrepreneurs
of the region, business associations, chambers of commerce and industry, Sparkassen,
attorneys etc.) and on whose expertise the students can draw. Due to the fact that sponsors
from Lüneburg initiated the chair, the regions feedback to this new initiative has been good.
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